


do i have to come right out and say it

by belugas



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Summer Camp, F/M, God bless him, Idiots in Love, Jaime Lannister is Dumb as Hell, Minor Injuries, Mutual Pining
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-31
Updated: 2020-12-31
Packaged: 2021-03-11 01:46:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,424
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28447125
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/belugas/pseuds/belugas
Summary: Brienne would rather be anywhere else in the world besides out in the woods in the dark looking for Jaime Lannister, of all people. Shedefinitelydoesn’t want to be out here in the woods around Camp Blackwater with nothing more than the trees, her flashlight, and the hope that someone else finds Jaime first so she doesn't have to throttle him.
Relationships: Jaime Lannister/Brienne of Tarth
Comments: 10
Kudos: 43
Collections: JB Festive Festival Exchange 2020





	do i have to come right out and say it

**Author's Note:**

  * For [hillaryschu](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hillaryschu/gifts).



It is very dark, and Brienne is very annoyed.

She'd rather be anywhere else in the world, she thinks, besides out in the woods in the dark looking for Jaime Lannister, of all people. _Anywhere_ , although specifically she would prefer to be in the dining hall — with a styrofoam cup of hot cocoa and Sansa and Margaery, for example, the only friends she's actually made this summer, and some of the few people who aren’t constantly trying to fuck with her. Unlike Jaime Lannister.

She definitely doesn’t want to be out here in the woods around Camp Blackwater with nothing more than the trees, her flashlight, and the hope that someone else finds Jaime first so she doesn't have to throttle him.

He’s so _fucking annoying_ , she thinks as she turns off the trail, twigs and pine needles snapping beneath her feet. On a normal Saturday she’d already be safely back in her cabin with her campers after losing capture the flag to the rest of the counselors, and she's _fine_ with that, as much as she specifically hates losing to Jaime. He can't beat her at anything else, so he takes the chance once a week to hang the flag somewhere she'll never find it, just to humiliate her. She’s fast and she’s strong, and she’s not _stupid_ , it’s just that Jaime is very specifically good at outsmarting her. The third week of the summer, when he’d hidden it on the roof of her own cabin just out of her line of sight, had been a real low point.

This week, though, he went out with the flag and didn't show up back at the soccer field in time for the game, and then he continued to not show up, and then it got dark so everyone went out looking for him instead.

Why can’t he just be a _normal_ person, Brienne wonders, picking her way further off the path. Why can’t he just play a stupid game like everyone else. He’s probably fucking with her, specifically, again— he’s probably safe back at camp, laughing about how she’s out here in the middle of the woods like a big stupid idiot. She checks her watch. She’ll give it another five minutes before heading back to camp, where Jaime probably already is.

She hopes her campers aren’t fighting again.

Brienne steps over a fallen tree, and stops, straining her ears — she could swear she heard something above her own steps.

“Hello?” comes a far-off, tired-sounding voice, a moment later. “Anybody out there?”

She starts off immediately to the right, towards the voice. “Jaime? Is that you?” she calls, and stops to listen again.

“Sure is,” he replies.

Brienne rolls her eyes and keeps going. “Hold on, then, I’m coming to you,” she calls, making no effort not to sound annoyed as she trudges towards him. If he’s messing with her, she doesn’t think she can _not_ punch him.

She keeps following the sound of Jaime’s voice over another log and a tiny little stream, glinting in the moonlight that’s peeking through the boughs of the pine trees, and she’s so focused on finding him and not losing her footing that she very nearly doesn’t see the ground drop off in front of her.

“Hey, stop!” a voice yells from below, and Brienne yelps, dropping (well, throwing) her flashlight in surprise, and then there’s a rustling sound and a _thunk_ and the voice says “Ouch, that was unnecessary.”

“ _Jaime_?” she asks, still partly in shock. There’s some more rustling, and then the beam of her flashlight clicks back on — when she takes a careful step forward to peer over the edge, there his stupid face is, lit from below like a dramatic idiot, some four and a half feet down.

“As always, I appreciate your quick wit, Tarth.”

Brienne suddenly and desperately wishes she had another flashlight to throw at him. She stifles the urge to pick up a stick. “What are you _doing_ down there?”

“Oh, you know.” Jaime shrugs, and flips the flashlight down so that the beam hits his leg, and she can see now that his ankle is twisted at an unnatural and genuinely unfortunate angle. “Just vibing.”

“You’re—“ Brienne just blinks at him, for a moment. She has a better view of the hole now, too, with the flashlight on. It’s just a dip in the forest floor, really, full of sticks and old brown pine needles, and with a sharp four-foot drop on this side and what looks like a more gradual slope at the back— easy enough to miss, if you aren’t paying attention. “Jaime, what happened to you?”

He sighs. “I was just trying to win capture the flag again, which was going perfectly fine until, uh. This hole happened, and I twisted my ankle on the way down. Also I broke my fall with my wrist.” He holds it up gingerly, wincing.

Brienne is clambering down into the hole before he’s finished, crouching beside him and wresting the flashlight from his hand. “Why didn’t you call for help? Everyone’s out looking for you.”

“My phone’s dead,” Jaime replies. “And I did call for help. I’ve /been/ calling for help, actually, I just don’t think anyone could hear me. Until you did, I guess.” He shrugs again. This close, she can see the thin sheen of sweat on his face, the way he’s holding himself very carefully to avoid moving his ankle. “Thanks, by the way.”

She doesn’t answer, still half-frustrated and a little guilty. She looks at his ankle a moment more before carefully prodding it with her thumb. “Sorry, sorry,” she says when he hisses, and pulls her hand away. “I think it’s broken, Jaime.”

“I think you’re right, Tarth,” he replies — this might be the first time he’s ever agreed with her, and that in itself tells Brienne he’s really trying to keep himself together. “We gonna do anything about that, or are you just gonna leave me out here?”

She presses her lips together. “I’m not going to leave you out here,” she says, although a not-insignificant part of her sort of wants to. She stands, and hands him back the flashlight. “Let me call Sansa. Someone can come pick us up.”

Jaime nods.

Brienne slides her phone out of her pocket, saying a quick prayer that she has service out here, with how spotty it can be around camp. Luckily, she does.

She puts Sansa on speakerphone as soon as she picks up. “Hey, I found Jaime.”

“Oh shit,” Sansa replies — there’s the muffled sound of her relaying this to the rest of the room — “what happened? Where are you?”

“Out off the north trailhead. He hurt his his ankle pretty bad, Sans, someone’s going to have to come and pick us up. His wrist, too.”

Jaime sits up a little straighter, leaning towards the phone. “Hi. Sorry.”

“On it.” Sansa’s voice goes muffled again. “ _Yes, the north trail. Yes, you should go now_. Okay, Jon’s heading your way with the gator. How far off the trail are you?”

Brienne shakes her head. “Pretty far, and I don’t think it’s driveable. I’ll… I’ll get us back to the trail and he can just come meet us there, though, it should be fine. Just tell him to keep going past the old smokehouse, til he’s almost at the property line.”

“Gotcha,” Sansa replies. “Be careful, okay?”

“We will,” Jaime answers, before Brienne can, and she glares at him.

“Thanks, Sansa.” Brienne hangs up and turns back to Jaime, surveying the situation. “Okay,” she says softly, more to herself than to Jaime, “okay.”

“Is it?” Jaime asks, and again she stifles the urge to hit him.

“If I can get you out of this hole, yes.” She’s going to have to _hold_ him, she realizes, she is going to have to pick him up, and it’s sort of her own personal nightmare but at least it’s the best shot she has at getting this over with.

Brienne looks at him a moment, chewing her lip. There’s no good way to do this; she’ll just have to go for it. She can do it, it’s fine, she isn’t really _touching him_ touching him, she’s just. Getting him out of a hole, that’s all. _Just don’t think about it._

“I’m going to pick you up and see if you can stand, okay?” she says, and Jaime — although he looks like he’s biting back some stupid comeback — just nods again. She bends, gets her hands under his arms, and lifts, and _oh no_ , this is much, much worse than she’d imagined. Jaime grunts a little, leans over onto his good hand to help prop himself upright, and it helps enough that she heaves him to his feet. Well, foot.

“Ouch,” Jaime says, swaying a little, and Brienne clutches him more tightly.

“Are you okay?” she asks, doing everything she can to keep from thinking about how he’s leaning against her chest more than seems necessary. It’s both hot and deeply embarrassing. She’s very glad it’s dark and he can’t see her blushing, she’s sure her face is beet red.

He nods again, more desperately. “Yeah, I’m, uh— I’m fine. A little lightheaded, but it’s fine. Keep going.”

“Okay,” Brienne replies. “Can you— do you think you can walk up, if you lean on me?”

She feels Jaime move his leg, but jerk it back with a grunt the second he puts weight on his ankle. “Not to be a downer,” he says, “but I really don’t think I can.”

He really does sound terrible, and that makes up Brienne’s mind for her. “Then I’ll have to carry you,” she says, and turns so just his shoulder is touching her chest, keeping one arm firmly around his shoulders while she bends to get the other under his knees, and lifts him.

Jaime makes a surprised sound, but doesn’t resist, just loops an arm around her neck and bends his knees for her.

He’s heavier than she expected, but it’s not so bad — her first testing step isn’t too unsteady, and she gets them up and out of the less steep side of the hole without much difficulty, and shockingly without any complaints from her cargo. 

“You okay?” She can feel him breathing, so she knows he isn’t dead or passed-out or anything, but she needs to know. She needs to hear his voice.

“Yeah,” Jaime replies, softly. “You’re, uh. As strong as you look, huh?”

Brienne swallows, new shame making her face feel somehow even hotter. “Fuck off.”

“I didn’t mean—“ he huffs a ragged sigh. “I just— it’s _good_ , that you are. It’s a compliment.”

He’s so stupidly warm in her arms, his breath a steady rise and fall against her own chest and a gust across the collar of her sweatshirt. He smells good, somehow, even though it’s admittedly mostly leaves and sweat, and he leans his head tiredly against her shoulder when he’s finished talking. Brienne thinks she might actually be in hell.

“Let’s just get back to camp,” she says, tightly. “Point the flashlight ahead, please.”

It’s easy going, if slow. Neither of them says anything for a long while, and Brienne just walks, listening to the crunch of pine needles under her feet and the sound of Jaime’s breathing, just so she knows he’s still with her. He’s shit at keeping the flashlight steady, but somehow she manages to make it back to the trail without stumbling.

Her arms are shaking by now, and she stumbles across the trail towards a wide old pine tree. “We made it,” she says, more out of relief than for Jaime’s benefit, but he nods anyway. “Jon should be here soon, we just have to wait.”

“Good,” Jaime replies, and he sounds relieved, too, “great, that’s— thanks, Tarth.”

Brienne glares at him as she bends to set him down against the tree. Does he really need to make fun of her right now? “Stop it.”

“No,” he says, and he sounds _desperate_ for some reason. “No, I mean it, you didn’t need to come out here, and you just fucking— carried me to safety, and you didn’t have to do that, either, and I just—“ She’s pulling her arms out from between him and the tree, she doesn’t realize how close they are until she looks down at him, and Jaime stares up at her for only a fraction of a second before leaning up and—

 _Kissing_ her.

He’s pressing his lips to hers, it couldn’t be anything else, and he’s somehow got his good hand fisted in her sweatshirt just enough to keep her there, but still gently enough that she could pull away, and he’s breathing hard through his nose, and when he pulls away and lets her go his eyes are so earnest it’s almost frightening .

“Thank you,” he says, very softly, and smooths the crease in the front of Brienne’s sweatshirt before her brain has a chance to catch up.

It does, a half second later, and she pulls her hands away like he’s burned her, stands and staggers back. “You—“ she breathes, “you’re welcome,” like an _idiot_ , because it’s truly the only thing that comes to her fully blank mind, and she watches Jaime sag back against the tree trunk, his face unreadable. Brienne takes another two steps back, until she’s safely across the trail and can sit, shaking, against another pine tree.

The next ten minutes are the longest in her life. Neither one of them says anything else, and she hardly looks at him except out of the corner of her eye, to make sure he’s still upright. Finally, they see headlights in the distance and hear the rumbling of the gator, and Brienne, still shaking, jumps to her feet to wave Jon down.

“Shit, I hardly found you,” he says, helping Brienne load Jaime into the back of the gator, lying across the bed, “how’d you get out here in the first place, Lannister?”

“Hubris,” is Jaime’s weary reply.

Brienne catches herself checking the rearview mirror almost every minute just to make sure he hasn’t fallen off the back — or maybe because she hopes he has, she really isn’t sure. She’s so _tired_ , and sore, and it’s all she can do to help load Jaime into Ned’s truck so they can take him to the emergency room.

After that, it’s all a blur, and she only barely remembers making it back to her own cabin and collapsing into bed.

**Author's Note:**

> happy holidays, giftee! ♥ thank you SO much for giving me the chance to write a summer camp au, i've had so much fun with this. i'm sorry to post this in halves, but the second chapter will be up very soon, i promise! 
> 
> title is from [a buffalo springfield song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jijdla3Il3o) that's a cute mood for these two, especially this au's ridiculous baby jaime.
> 
> find me @bebeocho on tumblr.


End file.
